


Adventures in Dusty Attics and Sneeze Storms, or: how Ororo set up a Date

by ladanse



Series: 5 Times The Students Figured Something Out about their Professor (and one time they learned the full story) [2]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Drinks His Feelings, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9919286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladanse/pseuds/ladanse
Summary: Ororo finds some photographs in the mansion's attic. Chaos inevitably ensues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> here's the next installment in the 5+1! if you haven't read the first one, please do - it will provide a little context and also some Jean Grey & Prof fluff :)

  
Ororo is really sick of Jean's caginess.

 

It's been two days since there was yelling from the boys' corridor and she started avoiding everyone except the Prof, finding some excuse to leave every time she was asked what was wrong. Jubilee had tried, Kurt had tried - even Pietro had tried, even if that only consisted of his popping up beside her, saying "Hey Jean, why are you being so weird?" and being gone before she had time to process the question.

 

"Jean, are you feeling all right?" Ororo finally tries, the second morning. Her voice is steady; she's trying not to feel self-conscious about her accent, considering how easily Kurt wears his. (She's been slowly editing it out of her voice, anyway, although she's kept the white hair. It looks rad, all right?)

 

"I'm fine," says Jean, her voice smooth and too-blank. She's staring carefully at the patterns on the wood flooring. "Although," she says (and now Jean looks at her, the sneaky _asshole_ ), "You have something on your mind. You're - worried?"

 

"Jean, honey," says Ororo, carefully. She's picked up the endearment recently and loves it; it's sweet when she says it to the gaggle of tiny mutants who seem to always trail her like ducklings, but to almost everyone else, it's delightfully condescending. "We have only known each other for six months, but even I can tell when you are deflecting. What's happened?"

 

"Nothing. It's - nothing."

 

Ororo stares her down. Jean fidgets under her gaze. "What did Scott do," says Ororo, finally, because with Jean, that's usually a safe bet.

 

Jean's eyes startle like a rat flushed out of a fruit basket. "Nothing - why would you say - I just remembered - I need to meet with the Professor - see you!" she says, and then she is gone.

 

Ororo debates the merit of holding her in place with a few well-chosen gusts of wind, and then dismisses the idea as too much effort. Those two are probably fighting (again).

 

Besides, Jean is right about her mood, even if Ororo won't admit it. There is something bothering her, and she has been meaning to talk to the Professor about it. She has a tiny suspicion that if she goes to see him right now, Jean will not, in fact, be there with him.

 

Jubilee pops up behind her, the eye-searing yellow coat a permanent fixture in the corner of Ororo's eye. "Have you talked to Jean?"

 

"Yeah. She just left," says Ororo, pointing down the hallway. Jubilee falls into step beside her.

 

"So she's still acting weird," says Jubilee, when she doesn't elaborate.

 

"Yeah. All I know is that it has something to do with Scott."

 

"Did her and Scott have another fight? Or did they finally make out?"

 

Ororo is startled into laughter. "You mean - those two - "

 

"Yes, definitely," says Jubilee, authoritative. "Me and Kurt have a bet going."

 

"You should ask her," says Ororo. "I can corner Scott. He likes me better, anyway."

 

"That's just because he likes your hair."

 

"Better than a pair of one-eyed glasses," agrees Ororo, putting her hands to her face in a crude imitation of his horrible mask. Jubilee bursts into her familiar bubbling laughter.

 

"I'll find her, then," she says. "See ya around," and she skips down the hall.

 

*

 

"Ororo, my dear. What can I do for you? You're worried about something," says the Professor.

 

Ororo blinks at the cup of tea he's pushed in her hand; she's somehow already sitting in his most comfortable armchair. Wasn't she just at the door?

 

He gives her a simple smile in response to her confusion. The Professor is strange, like that, and that's even without his powers.

 

"Um," she says, eloquently. "Yes. I was hoping - " she trails off, embarrassed. Her accent is always thicker when she's nervous. He only smiles at her, free of judgment, and gestures at her to continue. "Well - back home, I didn't have a lot of time for school," she begins. It's true - between desperate thievery, working odd jobs, avoiding the police, hiding her powers, and feeding a gaggle of found siblings, she didn't really have enough time to worry about mathematics and writing beyond what she needed to survive. Now, watching Jean bury herself in books from Westchester's massive library, and becoming unbearably interested, despite herself, in the science behind her powers and in the engineering of Hank's newest plane, she wants to learn. "I was hoping - if I could take some night classes in New York, or something like that - " she trails off again. "It would be nice."

 

"That's a marvelous idea, Ororo," says the Professor, gentle, pride in his smile. "We can start looking at possibilities right away. I'm afraid, though, that my knowledge about college is rather - skewed, not to mention nearly twenty years old, and Hank's as well - "

 

"Because you are both geniuses," says Ororo, grinning.

 

"Well," says the Professor, smiling back. Then, more serious - "Also, we both came from money. Although I would quite willingly pay for any classes you would like to take - "

 

"No," says Ororo, immediately.

 

"Of course," says the Professor, easily. "I'll call up some contacts at Columbia. I'm sure there are scholarships you can apply for, and schools have begun to offer aid to international students. There is always going to be discrimination, especially as you are a mutant as well - " he meets her gaze squarely, and Ororo runs her hand over her desert-brown skin and nods - "but you're brilliant enough that I'm sure they'll have to let you in, anyway."

 

Ororo, privately, isn't so sure about that. Her doubts must show on her face (or the Professor is reading her) because he wheels his chair closer, and puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Ororo," he says, reassuring. "The fact that you are coming to me with this - that you've thought about it - tells me that this is important to you. It's in your very capable hands, now, and that is how I know that you will be all right."

 

She gives him an incredulous smile, and he nods, briskly. "Right, then. If you'll check the attic, somewhere in there you should find some of my old Oxford trunks. Start there, and see if you can find my address book. I knew the Dean and some of the assistant Deans while I was there - I'm sure we could call some of them up - and there was the time I lectured at Columbia - "

 

"Why didn't you keep it with you?"

 

"What?" says the Professor, startled out of recollection.

 

"You didn't keep the address book with you?"

 

"Ah, no," says the Professor, slightly rueful. He wheels back, slightly, turns his head away. "It was a...different part of my life, and I locked it away, after - well. After -" he trails off.

 

"Hank told me the school wasn't doing so well, for a time," says Ororo. She's treading on thin ice, but she can tell the Professor needs to say whatever he's not saying.

 

The Professor looks at her closely, a small smile quirking his lips. "He would put it like that, yes. The school...it was shut down, for a while. It was a bit of a bad time for all of us, during the war, and for me in particular. To this day, I couldn't tell you why Hank stayed with me through it all."

 

"I'd stay," says Ororo, unthinking. She doesn't take it back, though. It's true. The Professor has that sort of kindness to him - she couldn't imagine anyone choosing to leave.

 

"If only that were so," says the Professor wistfully; he's caught her last thought.

 

  
_Who left?_ Ororo wants to ask, but she doesn't. She's not that reckless, not quite. "I think it is," she says, instead, and then, "I'll find your trunk."

 

He smiles at her. "Let me know when you do."

 

*

 

The attic is, profoundly, a mess.

 

The entirety of the left side is blocked by stacked rows of targets, some pristine, but most splintered in some way or another. They are clearly different batches; some are bulls-eyes, some have numbers, and the colors don't match. There are rows of dusty cardboard boxes, corners crinkled, that say nothing but "RESEARCH" in the Prof's clean, capitalized handwriting (and occasionally, Hank's much messier script). Farther back, there is just furniture - wardrobes, bureaus, dressers, sofas, tables, all draped in wrap and dust; Ororo can see carefully stacked boxes of what must be silverware labelled with different monikers for each dining room. There is a case full of silver- and gold-edged china, pristine and marked with "PARTY USE" by an elegant, feminine hand. Ororo is reminded, abruptly, that the Professor came from a family of wealth - not just the kind who owned a mansion, but the kind who showed it off.

 

After nearly an hour of coughing and nearly breaking things and trying not to cause a duststorm when she inevitably sneezes hard enough to blow her nose off, she finds what must be the Prof's Oxford trunks. Less carefully than she would like, she drags it out to the relatively dust-free space she accidentally cleared (via mutant-wind-sneeze) earlier, and pops open the latch.

 

The top of the trunk holds a yellowing garment bag, several binders labelled with the CIA logo, and a car key, tagged with a rental ticket. These, she carefully moves aside, to find stacks of notebooks, t-shirts and patches emblazoned with the Oxford crest, and a small, worn book with alphabetical tabs coming out of one side.

 

It's neatly organized by last name and location, and Ororo digs a stubbly pencil out of the box to go through the book in the semidarkness, circling the contacts marked COLUMBIA and chewing on the rubbery end of the pencil. She puts the pencil down after a Whitman, and snaps the book shut. Something clinks, and she frowns at the little key that has fallen into her lap.

 

Now. Ororo knows the meaning of privacy. She respects the Professor. But there is too much curiosity in her to leave well enough alone; she picks up the silvery key and turns the trunk to face her, running her hands over the inside before she realizes that it has a false bottom. The key fits perfectly into the slit fitted at the back of the trunk's interior, and she lifts the bottom of the trunk away to find -

 

Pictures. Three. Old and yellowing, and slightly blurry, but unmistakably of Magneto.

 

(Well, thinks Ororo. She's not sure he's really Magneto, yet, in these. He's smiling so widely he may very well be someone else.)

 

*

 

After a half hour of deliberation, in which she desperately hopes that the Professor is too occupied in his beginner mathematics course to sense her hesitation, she sets the pictures carefully inside the back cover of the address book and takes it downstairs.

 

"I've circled some numbers in here," she says, holding it up. The Professor looks up from the seven-year-old he's teaching and nods.

 

"I'll call them up this afternoon," he replies. "You found the trunk all right?"

 

Ororo nods, not trusting her voice, and hurries out.

 

*

 

She drops by his study later in the evening, not bothering to knock, and stops abruptly when she finds him nursing a glass of something amber, with the pictures laid out neatly in front of him.

 

"Should I - " she says, and trails off.

 

He gives a broken little laugh, and gestures her inside. "Thank you for these," he says. "I had forgotten how - " His fingers brush the edge of the smallest of the three photos.

 

"I didn't know Magneto could be so happy," she says, cautiously.

 

"He's a good man," says the Professor. Ororo thinks of how he used to angle his body between her and Psylocke and the clay-faced horror that was Apocalypse, and has to agree.

 

The Professor then seems to hesitate, tapping the photo with the corner of his ring finger. "This doesn't bother you?"

 

"No," she says. She doesn't have to ask what he means; Mystique hadn't just been her idol because of how well she fought, after all. To see the Professor so at ease with himself is - well, comforting. "Not at all."

 

The Professor seems to accept this. When he bows his head back over the pictures, his eyes too bright, Ororo quietly lets herself out.

 

*

 

("Did you and Jean have another fight?" Ororo asks at dinner.

 

"Fuck _off_. I don't want to talk to her," says Scott, and hurries away.)

 

*

 

At exactly 10:13 that evening, the doorbell rings. Ororo and Jean and Jubilee are already in their room; Jubilee's half-asleep and just makes an irritable noise at the clanging. Ororo gets up to investigate, and Jean looks like she's considering staying until Ororo pulls her out by force. They are both barefoot and wearing sleeveless tops; it's a testament to how far they've come that neither of them feel vulnerable.

 

At the door is Mystique, completely naked per her usual, speaking with the Professor, who spins his chair around when he senses them.

 

The Prof and Jean proceed to make Meaningful Eye Contact, and Ororo rolls her eyes. "What's going on? Out loud, please."

 

This earns her a snort from Mystique. "The Brotherhood is conducting evolutionary field research, and requests the Professor's expertise."

 

"I still don't believe you, Raven," says the Prof, sounding almost petulant and very British. "The Brotherhood doesn't _research_."

 

"Whatever you think, Charles, we're not lunatics or idiots," says Mystique. "Besides, Magneto ordered the project himself."

 

"Did he?"

 

Ororo notes the undertone of the Prof's question, and wonders how she's supposed to lie to Jean about why it's there.

 

Then - "Interesting," says Jean, out loud. There's also a _tone_ to her voice. Ororo wonders what she's playing at. "Magneto ordered it?"

 

"Jean," says the Professor. "It's none of your concern. If Er- if Magneto has requested research aid, I will be happy to lend him my theses."

 

Ororo puts it together just as she feels Jean dip into her mind - _she knows too_ \- and then it's the two girls' turn for Meaningful Eye Contact.

 

"You and Hank could go meet with him in person," suggests Ororo, before she quite knows what she's doing. Jean's grin is growing steadily wider. "I'm sure that would be more efficient."

 

"I don't think - "

 

"Ororo and I could do just fine if you're gone. It wouldn't even be that long."

 

"Maybe you could meet up at Providence Park - "

 

"It's supposed to be nice out tomorrow - "

 

"It's a date, then," says Mystique, her eyes alight. "I'll make my report to Magneto. See you tomorrow, Charles. 11:00, don't be late. And I'll expect Hank to be there."

 

"Raven - "

 

She's out the door before any of them can blink.

 

The Professor turns his chair to face them very, very slowly. " _Girls_ ," he says, and doesn't seem to have anything to follow it up with.

 

"You're welcome," offers Jean.

 

"Good night, Prof," says Ororo.

 

They sling an arm over each others' shoulders, unaccountably pleased with themselves, and amble off down the hall.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos are almost better than caffeine, y'all


End file.
